MBC interviewed various owners of the companies who had been subcontracted for this special production. Lee Dong Won, who runs a small clothing company with 4 employees, had a contract with JYP Entertainment and printed a quantity of 5,000 Clothes Albums. However, only 140 copies of the Clothes Album were sold, and JYP Entertainment had paid them only for what was sold, and didn’t pay for the remaining unsold products and consequent debt.

It’s not only Lee Dong Won’s company – every other subcontractor who had printed toothbrushes and t-shirts had a debt amounting to over 20,000,000 KRW (approximately $18,000 USD) and 100,000,000 KRW (approximately $90,000 USD) respectively. Furthermore, the small companies attempted to sell the remaining products themselves to recuperate the losses, but they couldn’t because of copyright issues.

When first contacted by MBC, JYP Entertainment’s PR team said, “We only knew about this because you informed us of the situation. Since we first heard of it, there’s so much information that we had no knowledge of. We are currently figuring out the situation.”

The label then made an official statement, saying, “The team leader who was in charge of this has already left the company because we discovered that he had violated company rules. There was no way for us to have any knowledge of what really happened between the manufacturers and the subcontractors. The new manager that was appointed only looked over the contracts, and there were no problems from that standpoint. We have already sent official documents of cooperation to the companies so we can get more details on the situation. When we work with other companies in the future, we will make sure to be more detailed in our process so the small subcontractors are not hurt.”